Gordon Brown: Prime Minister. Tom Bower

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СКАЧАТЬ people. Unlike Brown, he had developed the technique of telling people what they wanted to hear, flattering potential critics and cultivating bores whom others would ignore. There was freshness to his soundbites, which were exquisitely delivered. ‘Tough on crime, and tough on the causes of crime’ had won plaudits which, as Brown never ceased to remind people, was a debt owed to him, who had conceived the slogan. But there was more to Blair than mere soundbites. His appeal was to the whole country rather than to a particular tribe or a class. His ambivalence – by refusing to feign sentimental links with the trade unions or to posture as a radical egalitarian – proved his chameleon appeal. Those qualities brought him limited favour in the elections to the shadow cabinet in autumn 1993. Robin Cook came top, Brown fell to fourth, while Blair was sixth.

      Brown and Blair were driven back to London from the party conference by Derek Draper, Peter Mandelson’s special adviser. Their conversation was dominated by their comparatively poor performances in the poll. Brown was worried about losing his seat on the shadow cabinet the following year. The solution, he suggested, was to employ a researcher to bolster their support. One week later Saul Billingsley was hired on a salary of £10,000, two thirds of which was paid by Brown, and one third by Blair. Blair’s contribution was a calculated attempt to pacify Brown rather than confirmation of his own anxiety. Brown paid Billingsley from the income he earned from the Daily Record, but occasionally he ran out of money. ‘Don’t cash that cheque,’ Sue Nye told Derek Draper on one occasion. ‘Gordon is temporarily overdrawn.’ Based in Brown’s office in Millbank, Billingsley analysed each constituency’s local issues. He sent fact sheets to the constituencies showing the policies which Brown believed would cure their particular problems, and with a message from Brown. If there was an indication that a constituency might be persuaded to shift in Brown’s favour, Billingsley would invite the local party leaders to meet Brown in Westminster. The tactic worked. Several constituency activists praised Brown as ‘active and committed’, an important asset in his fight against enemies like Peter Hain.

      Hain had published another pamphlet demanding that £20 billion be spent on investment and training. This indiscipline outraged the shadow chancellor. Hain, Brown decided, was to be decapitated. With the help of Derek Foster, Labour’s chief whip, a large posse of born-again Tribunites marched unannounced into the group’s annual general meeting and voted against Hain’s re-election as general secretary. The coup was smooth, and tax and spend was suppressed as an issue in Labour’s debates. Brown received little credit for neutralising Hain; instead, he faced resentment.

      Once again, to prove his credibility, his language against the Tories became vehement. He accused them outright of dishonesty: ‘The Tories lied about taxation,’ became a recurring theme. ‘They’re incapable in my view,’ he said in a speech on 1 December 1993, ‘of telling the difference now between truth and falsehood; incapable and unable to tell the truth, or even recognise it.’ Carefully honed phrases like ‘thousands of pensioners will have to choose between heating and eating’ failed to excite his party, although the opinion polls steadfastly predicted a Labour election victory. To win trust, Brown constantly repeated, ‘Unlike the Tories, there will be honest disclosure. We will be straight with the British people … There will be no sleight of hand. What you see on taxes will be what you get.’ Opinion polls suggested that while the Tories were unpopular with the public because of their tax increases, Labour had still failed to convince them that they had a coherent economic strategy.

      Over Christmas 1993, Brown pondered his fate. He had been the star pupil of Kirkcaldy, the star of Edinburgh University, and ever since his memorable maiden speech there had been expectations that one day he would be in Downing Street. Yet he appeared to be stymied. His jokes may have been memorable – ‘John Major went to Pittsburgh and discovered he had no past. He came back to Britain and discovered he had no future’ – but his critics questioned whether there was any more to him than cracking jokes and dissecting statistics. His sulks and his negative politics raised the questions of whether he was simply destructive or could ever inspire uncertain voters. Some of his personal traits were off-putting. He reluctantly posed for photographs in a pullover, and when asked to remove his tie replied, ‘I never take off my tie.’ He was also gauche, describing formal dinners as a waste of time. He lacked taste not only in art, furniture and wine, but also in food. He gobbled down whatever was offered without comment, suggesting an indifference to life’s refinements. His impatience extended to parliament. ‘During prime minister’s questions,’ he explained, ‘I often have to sit in the chamber for an hour and may speak for only thirty seconds. The place is geared towards eloquence rather than the pursuit of excellence.’ He was puzzled that some of his characteristics could irritate others.

      Peter Mandelson offered help. Brown suffered, Mandelson calculated, from ‘press mania’. His reliance on Ed Richards, an unremarkable apparatchik, had spawned a compulsion to seek appearances on news bulletins and current affairs programmes. Brown erupted in uncontrolled rages even if a rival Labour politician featured on a news bulletin at 5.15 on a Saturday afternoon. ‘They’re trying to do me down,’ he shouted at Mandelson after watching one MP deliver a nine-second soundbite. Everyone, he claimed, was trying to ‘do him down’. He was prepared to travel from Scotland to London early on a Sunday morning to broadcast for a few fleeting seconds.

      This hunger for influence was not accompanied by personal vanity. Repeatedly, he refused the opportunity to watch the playbacks of his party political broadcasts. Seemingly irked by his own face, his unfashionable opinion about politics was that the message rather than the image was important. Although assured by Barry Delaney, the producer of Labour’s political broadcasts, that women found him attractive, he was ambivalent about American talkshow host Jay Leno’s opinion that ‘Politics is show biz for ugly people.’

      Brown’s mixture of frenzy and shyness prompted Peter Mandelson to suggest in late 1993 that he hire Charlie Whelan as his press spokesman. Mandelson had known Whelan since the 1992 election, and had been impressed by his abilities at the recent party conference while discussing OMOV. Brown knew him from the regular Tuesday lunches hosted by Gavin Laird, the general secretary of the AEUW. Laird had praised Whelan, his spokesman, as having ‘real flair’. Whelan’s particular talent, reinforced by his natural energy and bonhomie, was to spot opportunities for an AEUW representative to speak on TV news programmes. While his officials appeared in front of the cameras, rival trade unionists were ignored. That expertise was precisely Brown’s requirement.

      Born in Peckham in 1955, Whelan would above all be obedient and loyal to Brown’s cause. ‘Able but very lazy,’ was his headmaster’s conclusion after the young Whelan failed one examination. In the hope of solving the problem, his parents sent him to a fee-paying boarding school in Surrey. He secured an unimpressive degree in politics at the City of London Polytechnic. When he started his first job as a foreign exchange dealer in the City, he spoke in a Home Counties accent. One year later, employed as a researcher by the AEUW, he spoke like a Cockney. Influenced by Jimmy Airlie, the forceful trade union leader renowned for his campaign to save the Upper Clyde shipbuilders, Whelan demonstrated his lack of political judgement when he joined the Communist Party in 1975. Whether he understood the reasons for the Party’s dramatic decline since the Soviet invasions of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 is uncertain. Probably the oppression of East Europeans was less important to him than loyalty to Jimmy Airlie. He only resigned from the Party in 1990, after the final collapse of communism.

      The contrast between Charlie Whelan and Gordon Brown, the reserved, puritan non-smoker, could not have been greater – and that was the mutual attraction. During his fifteen years in the thuggish world of trade union politics Whelan had adopted a laddish style to promote his wheeler-dealer expertise. The clan chief spotted the chain-smoking, beer-drinking bruiser who shared a love of football as his man of business. Although Whelan was markedly unconscientious about detail, he would in some ways be an ideal soulmate. For his part, Whelan was flattered СКАЧАТЬ